perfidy

After over a decade in power, it seems as if Canada's liberal government is heading toward defeat. Trailing by a substantial margin behind Harper's conservatives, Martin's liberals are unlikely to retain control. Who exactly will have control remains to be seen, as the same polls indicate that it is uncertain whether the conservatives will actually attain a majority.

Columnist Mark Steyn has this appreciation of the situation:

By my math, the Tories are currently about 25 seats short of a majority, and the race does seem to be tightening as "undecideds" come home to their kleptocrat nanny. The Liberal vote seems to be holding up in the Maritimes and possibly in BC as well. The scarification strategy works - though, unlike 2004, it won't work well enough. And, as I wrote below, in Quebec antipathy to the Martinite Grits is so strong you can only scare folks from the Tories to the Bloc and vice-versa. Furthermore, while the bleeding of the Liberal vote to the Tories can be staunched, the desertion by a proportion of the left to the NDP looks less responsive to the scary stuff. So, even if everything else turned out swell, I reckon the Liberals are still looking at a significant loss of seats. If they were by some chance to wind up as the biggest single party, the Governor-General would invite Mr Martin to form his second (and even smaller) minority government.

Bloc Quebecois will get all of its votes from Quebec. The conservatives are stong in the west, and the liberal base is Ontario. However, the loberal vote will be split between the Liberal party and the NDP, which means that the Tories will have the most votes in Ontario. The Maritimes will likely be split evenly.

So what does it all mean? First, the likelihood of Martin keeping his job is slim. The conservatives will likely have to form a minority government, but even a "weak minority government unable to operate without the support of secessionist obstructionists" is better (in my opinion) than a scandal ridden administration that is reflexively anti-American. I'm sure Ross is less happy, but hey, we can always invade.

I'm curious as to where the Canadian sucessionist movement is. They appear to be at least for the moment happy with playing kingmaker in Canadian politics - but regional parties are typically the bane of democratic soceities. Either they will decide on their own to go back to trying to pull out of Canada, or the rest of the nation will get sufficiently pissed as to invite them to leave. The apparently permanent split of the Canadian left seems to leave the door open for continued growth of the Conservatives - something that will likely be fueled by the increasing oil wealth of the west. From what I have read, that part of British Canada that isn't Ontario has often been frustrated by the self-centeredness of the center.

The dark and disaster-hungry part of my soul really wants to see Canada break up. Naturally, I am aware that political instability is not a good thing, and having it on our northern border is even less a good thing. We're already reverse hemorrhaging on the south - an influx of Canadian political refugees is not something we should be asking for.

Nevertheless, just think of the spectacle - Quebec votes for independence, which would force the rest of Canada to contemplate the existential question of what is Canada, exactly, and do we need Quebec in it. Deciding that it does could lead to conflict. Deciding it doesn't could lead to rapid devolution on the model of Yugoslavia. Once the first one goes, there is far less justification for insisting that other parts remain part of the metropole. A rapidly balkanizing Canada would, at least, give Canadians the satisfaction that the Americans would finely being paying attention to them, but the end result would be hard to predict.

Some have speculated that parts of Canada would petition for statehood, Alberta being the most frequently mentioned. Quebec would certainly attempt to pursue an independent course – though problems with an Anglophone minority could prove troublesome. Other parts might decide to follow Quebec's example – British Columbia could go that way. Canada's maritime provinces would be poor candidates for independence, as they are very dependent on transfer payments from the Federal government for their economic livelihood. Ontario's ability to maintain those payments would be minimized at best with the loss of Alberta and the west – perhaps the Maritimes would shop around for a new federal government to subsidize them.

And beyond the secession of provinces from the Federal government, parts of provinces could retro-secede, leading to a patchwork of small independent states, a rump of British Canada with outposts across the northern tier of America, an angry and economically isolated Quebec, and new American states.

So long as no one gets killed, it would be fascinating to watch. And I'm curious to see how we'd design a flag with 57 stars.